


and so we heal, slowly.

by keeplovinanyway



Series: your mental health and the way it makes me feel [5]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Healthy Relationships, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Personal Growth, Unhealthy Relationships, the fluffiest fluff in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 02:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12621388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeplovinanyway/pseuds/keeplovinanyway
Summary: "I was such an asshole for a while," Dan says, and it knocks the air out of Phil's lungs.~~~Back when Dan was at his worst, mentally, Phil hurt too. He did it silently and quietly, barely acknowledging to himself what he felt.Now, years later, Dan apologizes, Phil revisits old pain, and lets himself be loved by Dan.Relationships aren't easy and straightforward, but this fight has been worth it, and they both know that.





	and so we heal, slowly.

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration for this hit me today and I couldn't stop writing until it was suddenly 10 pm and I had finished a very personal 3.8k oneshot in a couple of hours. You're welcome.
> 
> tw: reference to self-harm  
> see notes at the end for information on what to skip!

“I was such an asshole for a while,” Dan says. It’s a rainy evening mid September and they’ve both been busy doing their own things for a couple of hours. Now, Dan stands in the doorway to the gaming room where Phil has been editing and blurts out with something he’s probably been mulling over, immediate and pushing-through like he does with all things that he’s been over thinking.

Phil blinks.

Dan shuffles forward and plops into his gaming chair, puts his feet on the desk, leans back and closes his eyes. “I watched some of our old videos. And the liveshows and stuff. And that’s only what’s public of it. I was an asshole.”

Phil carefully minimizes Final Cut Pro and wheels the chair back a little bit. There’s a war going on inside of him, in which he battles down the instinct to immediately lie and reassure Dan that it had been fine, it hadn’t been that bad.

He laughs, because, this battle is one he’s still training in. “Why on earth would you watch that back,” he says. He knows _he_ doesn’t really dare to. (Doesn’t know if he could bare it, sometimes.)

Dan shrugs and does a sort of half-laugh.

“Do you… I mean, can I ask what kind of stuff you mean?” Phil manages. “I’ve just- you know, I didn’t really… think you were being terrible. You know I didn’t. I always just...” _looked for my own failures in the situation_ , Phil thinks. _Explained your behaviour because I didn’t want to see what you did wrong._

Dan looks at him like he knows what he’s thinking. Phil looks back and swallows. There’s a tension lingering between them, one that Phil can feel inside of his chest. This conversation could go several ways and most of them are good but not all of them are, and still, Phil realizes in this moment that he very much needs this talk to happen.

Dan breaks their eye contact and fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “Well.” He says. “Treating you like I couldn’t give a shit about your feelings, just for a starter. Like when I made you look bad on camera and always made fun of you. Or literally pushing you away whenever you wanted to come close to me. Hiding away in my room all the time without telling you why. Generally just not telling you about any fucking thing and then sometimes saying them in public even though I knew you’d get hurt- I was so stupid sometimes, and such a fucking terrible boyfriend.”

Phil wants to say something, to tell Dan that it wasn’t all like this and that he had his reasons, that Phil understood- but there is something in his throat, something big and heavy, and he has to draw a shaky breath and swallow hard around it.

Dan looks up again, with a gaze so vulnerable and intense that it almost knocks Phil out. “I just feel like I used you back then, and didn’t give much back. I am so sorry.”

“Dan,” God, his voice sounds wrecked. “Dan.”

Gentle, wonderful Dan, reaches his hand out to squeeze Phil’s arm, and smiles warmly. “Do you want me to leave you alone for a moment?”

There must be something Dan sees in his eyes as he searches his face, something lost maybe, at least that’s how Phil feels- because he suddenly leans in and presses a soft kiss to his cheek. “I know you usually need time to process things. I’ll be in the lounge if you want to come talk, alright?”

Phil watches as Dan gets up and walks out of the door, watches his tall and comfy body, this guy that brings him the most comfort nowadays. That knows him so well, cares so much.

He just watches and sits and thinks and feels. And remembers.

~~~

_It had been days going on like this. Dan slept in his own room, Dan got breakfast without Phil, Dan closed the door when he hid again._

_It hurt. Phil had tried to pretend it didn’t for a while, but it was past the point where he would have been able to do so. Not having had a proper conversation with his own boyfriend in four days was not something even Phil could simply explain away._

_He found himself standing in the hallway now, staring at the closed bedroom door. Dan was in there. He was there, just a couple of feet away. It should be so easy to just knock, to ask him to do something together, or how his day had been – God, Phil was so desperate to know how Dan’s day had been. He hadn’t seen him since he came into the kitchen to just see Dan putting his dishes away, before he then darted out of the room again._

_Shouldn’t he be able to talk to his own boyfriend?_

_Shouldn’t his own boyfriend be able to talk to him?_

_Phil felt so alone sometimes. Dan was not someone he could talk to, because well, that was the exact problem he was facing. There weren’t many friends he was close enough to talk to, and those that were, were already skeptical about their relationship. They’d heard him cry on the phone one too many times, and whenever Phil told them about a problem he experienced with Dan, he had this urge to explain why it was still a good relationship, why Dan didn’t do this to be mean, why it wasn’t all that bad._

_And same with his parents. He’d never let them in quite as far before as he had with friends, and already they worried even more than them did._

_It was lonely, living like this. To hurt all by yourself, hidden away in his apartment._

_Phil didn’t want it to be like that. He really didn’t._

_He’d been planning on going to his own room, but standing here right now, having zoned out to those dark thoughts that plagued him too often – he didn’t want to. That’s not who he was, or who they were. That’s not who he wanted them to be._

_His heart pounded heavy in his chest as he knocked on Dan’s door._

“ _Yeah?”_

_Tentatively, Phil stepped in. “Hey,” he said, “are you okay?”_

_Dan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah! Of course. Why would I not be.”_

You’re not though _, Phil thought,_ you are absolutely not.

_Instead, he smiled. “Oh, alright. That’s … good.”_

“ _Mhm.”_

_Oh God, why did it feel so awkward. There were a million things that Phil wanted to say and all of them would probably blow up in his face._

“ _Well…,” he cleared his throat, “you can come to me… if you need anything. At all. Dan?”_

_Dan had started typing on his laptop again. “I know, yeah, thank you.”_

_He looked up then, a wall behind his eyes so thick that Phil could feel it banging into him. “Close the door please? My liveshow starts soon.”_

“ _Oh, yeah. Okay. Um… will you sleep in my room tonight?”_

_Dan looked up again, startled. Phil wanted to slap himself. Why did he ask this? He didn’t want to argue. Not tonight. Not after they hadn’t talked about anything at all since Monday. Please, not now._

_But thankfully, Dan just shrugged, uncertain, leaving Phil to ache. Dan was hurting, and Phil could see it, but he didn’t know what to do._

“ _Maybe. I don’t know yet.”_

_Suddenly, Phil really needed to get to his own room. He nodded before quickly closing the door behind him, where he already felt tears prickling at his eyes._

_This was so hard. He knew that Dan was just lost, that he hid away from himself more than from Phil, but that didn’t lessen it feeling like there was a knife rummaging around in Phil’s chest. He breathed deeply, willing away the sobs that threatened to come up his throat. He’d just distract himself. Read, watch YouTube, work. That’s what he always did in times like these, after all. Just… be independent for a little while._ Almost as if you’re single _, a treacherous voice inside his head whispered._

_Phil shushed it down._

_Later, he sat in the lounge watching Dan do his liveshow on his own laptop. Dan laughed and talked about a video he’d been working on, a coffee he had gotten in town today (which was definitely a lie), some new music he had listened to. Phil pretended it only hurt a little bit. He was glad that he got to know at least something about Dan’s life in this way, he told himself. Glad that Dan had some outlet for his thoughts. He was grateful that he also got to hear those stories now, watching the liveshow. Happy, even. Yes, happy, that would be it. Not hurt. Not feeling heartbroken, no, not at all. No tears running down his face, no anger, sadness, fear rummaging around inside his chest._

_And after all, in a few days it’d be back to normal, wouldn’t it? It always had been, in the past. Phil had just to stay strong._

For what? Is it worth it?

_Again, Phil just shushed the devilish voice. Of course it’d be worth it. Of course it would be. It had to be._

_~~~_

It had been. The thought hits Phil like a rock, because back then, he’d been so lost and barely believed in it himself sometimes, but now he sees that it had been worth it.

And yet, he had hurt in a way and to an extent that he rarely ever acknowledged, and never out of his own accord. He only let himself feel broken when it really had been too much. Like those lonely nights sobbing into his pillow, while Dan was worlds away in the room behind their shared wall. Or when Dan had been gone from the apartment without a warning, and Phil’s head, very uninvitedly, provided various scenarios of his death and the funeral he’d have to attend. Their arguments, heated and explosive in a way arguments should never be. Their silences, cold and loaded, that weighed down on them in their happy moments too.

And there had been happy moments, sure. Those were what kept Phil going – suffering, sometimes, really -, because he always thought that those could get more again. That Dan could get better, they could get better, those happy moments could outweigh the bad.

Phil has ventured over to his AmazingPhil room now, cuddling on the bed with his laptop next to him. He’s in here sometimes, when he’s too lazy to walk up the stairs, and the downstairs lounge feels to uninviting. He misses this blanket sometimes, too.

Right now, it feels perfect. It carries all those memories and feelings that flood his mind

The hardest years must have been 2011, 2012 and 2013. No, not that they’d been all a waste, of course they hadn’t been. They had been happy a lot. They’d moved to London, started a radio show, been successful with this huge leap they took. They had loved and been in love, learned and grown with each other.

But it had been slow. Often it had felt like one step forward, and two back. In some periods of those years, Phil had felt like he didn’t know what kept him going. They had been happy, yes, but they had been sad at least as often.

Sometime during all of this, when Phil had felt like there was no one at all he could really talk to about his darkest thoughts and feelings, he had started making videos.

Just, privately. Just for himself.

“To Dan” he’d named the folder, password protected and hidden away in the depths of a boring looking directory path. “To Dan” he’d named all the videos, simple with numbers behind them.

Phil is looking at them now. There’s a total of 27, it seems.

He hasn’t watched a single one of them since they’ve been made.

 _You’re a grown man_ , he tells himself, _you can click this. Do it._

There’s another voice, much softer, that whispers that he needs this. That Phil hasn’t done enough of this acknowledging pain thing, and that right now is the moment for it. That this will feel right.

So he does. _To Dan (1)._ Double click.

There’s a much younger looking version of himself looking back at him. He knows watching his own videos, but- but this Phil, this isn’t AmazingPhil. It’s not a happy, lively and funny version of himself. This guy that stares into the camera looks dark, and broken, and talks quietly.

“Hey Dan,” the younger Phil says, and current Phil, the grown man, shivers and curls in on himself.

“I want to tell you so much, but I can’t. Because you can’t listen right now, and I think this would break you. This isn’t your fault by the way. I know you are hurting and don’t know what to do. That’s why I don’t tell you these things. But I need to say them somehow… and maybe, one day, I can give you these videos and you watch them. That’s what I hope for at least.”

Younger Phil pauses, swallows, takes a breath. He wears a blue button-up shirt and his fringe is long as it falls into his eyes.

“There’s a lot of things that are good between us. Like yesterday, we had an argument – it doesn’t really matter what it was about, it started out silly anyways – and then, after it happened, you came to me and apologized to me. _You_ came to _me_. And you were so sweet, and I knew right away again why I love you so much. But-” The Phil on camera breathes in deeply, “But today has been bad again. I saw your bandage on your arm, and asked what happened, and you said you cut yourself.” And oh, Phil remembers this day. This and all the others, but this, in particular.

“You said it like it didn’t matter, like it shouldn’t matter to me actually – but it does, and we had talked about this. I had told you I wanted you to tell me, but you don’t understand that… and then I cried. I feel so awful when I cry about this. Because I don’t want you to feel guilty, because then you won’t tell me even more… but I can’t, I just can’t, because it hurts _so much_ , Dan,”, and there it is, Phil is crying – both of them are, actually. Phil wipes at his eyes as the one on the screen looks up at the ceiling, with an expression that seems like he’s going to break apart.

“I have never told you this in so much detail, because of the guilt thing. But Dan… when you cut yourself, I feel like am going to actually vomit. Because you have been hurt, there’s been something literally destroying your skin, and normally I would do anything to stop that from happening- but it’s been you that has done that. And then I know that it’s because you hate yourself so much, and I feel even more sick. I just feel so helpless,” Phil says and looks straight at the camera, eyes red and watery, and current Phil hickups a sob, “when you are like this. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a fucking clue of what to do and it hurts me so badly, but I feel like I am not allowed that, because you hurt even more.”

“But you are,” current Phil whispers, “you are allowed to hurt.” Out of an impulse he reaches his hand to softly touch his younger version on the screen. He remembers this. He remembers the feeling of being lost, and he remembers how Dan had reacted in this scene, something his younger self recounts right now. How Dan had slammed doors and told Phil that it was none of his business what he did to himself. How much that reaction had hurt and confused him.

“I am not sure if you are right,” younger Phil says, “maybe it really is none of my business. I don’t know how to cope with that, but maybe I am just not supposed to hurt like I do. If that’s what you tell me, I am probably wrong in everything I feel. It’s just none of my business, I guess.”

Current Phil aches at this, a lot. He had never even dared to talk about anger, never even to himself, back then. And yet he sees it so clearly here, right next to the confusion and the pain. He had been angry that his own feelings had been neglected so much. Angry that Dan had made Phil feel as if he was wrong in the pain he experienced. He had known back then that Dan ached too, way more for sure, so Phil had never allowed himself this anger. But it had been there, nonetheless, eating away at him.

The video ends and the screen goes black. Phil stares with watery eyes into the distance. A minute passes, another.

He clicks the next video.

~~~

Dan looks at him as Phil comes into view on the stairs. He looks a little worried and seems to try to hide it, which makes Phil giggle a bit ashamedly.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello,” Dan smiles, expression relaxing. “How are you?”

How is he? He doesn’t really know. Exhausted, that’s for sure. He tells Dan as much.

“There’s this folder on my laptop. Back in the day, I made videos addressed to you, in which I told you how I really felt when things were bad. I watched all of them and now my head is all over the place.”

Dan laughs softly and pats the space next to him on the sofa. “Come here, you doofus.”

Phil obliges happily, tucks his feet close under Dan’s thighs.

“Aaah, you’re freezing!”

“Shut up, I deserve this.”

Dan’s face does a complicated thing. “You do,” he says, guiltily.

“Dan,” Phil cuddles closer, “that’s not what I meant.”

“But it’s true. I really treated you like shit for a while and never acknowledged your efforts, and you deserve so much more.”

Dan’s voice doesn’t hold any of the self-hate it could in a situation like this, and Phil softens even more against his form. He seems to have thought about this, come to terms with it, and really wants Phil to know about it now.

It sort of makes him want to cry again.

“Thank you,” he says, very softly. “I can’t really tell you how much this means to me.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Dan replies, “for everything.”

“That is so cheesy.”

“You deserve cheesy.”

Phil laughs, “Oh, shut up. I cried enough already.”

For this, Dan only holds on tighter, and Phil chuckles again.

“I am so proud of us, you know,” he says. “Watching those videos… it is unbelievable how far we’ve come. I never really told you how hard things were for me, because things were so hard for you too… but we both grew up so much, and we grew together as a couple. There’s miles and miles between then and now.”

He can hear Dan smile as he says, “I know. I am proud of us too. I love you, so much, you know that, right?”

Phil nods. “I love you too. But really… just the way I thought back then, how I wouldn’t even care for myself properly. And how dark some of those times were. There’s some where I-”, he hesitates to say this, but pushes forward anyway, “where I didn’t really know why we were still together.” He sits up more properly now, catches and holds Dan’s gaze. “I felt like I just kept pushing for something I didn’t know would ever come again, like I didn’t know if it was worth it. But it was. I could see myself learning in those videos and us becoming better and it was so worth it, and now I am so grateful for being so bad at goodbyes, because I am so glad I didn’t let you go when a part of me really wanted to.”

Dan nods and leans forward to kiss Phil, shortly.

“I am so glad you kept fighting. It must have been a lot, sometimes.”

There’s something about the way Dan focuses so solely on Phil today, about how he doesn’t ever beat himself up but just keeps caring for Phil, that makes him break into tears again.

“There’s one- oh, why am I crying so much,” Phil wipes across his nose, gross and not caring about it, “one where I wish for something like this to happen. I literally say that I hope you can see that one day and that I can really tell you how I felt, and you will be there for me. I just- this is just- Dan” And Dan is there, gathering Phil into his arms and holding him close. Phil’s voice is muffled now against the woolly jumper Dan is wearing.

“I am so sorry that I am making this such a big thing, but I really need this,” he manages.

Dan strokes across his back, steady and calming. “Don’t be sorry, love.” He so rarely uses pet names. “I’ve got you.”

They sit for a while like this. Phil keeps relishing in this feeling. In all of them, really, and there’s a lot: The dredged up pain and fear and anger from the past, that he hadn’t let himself feel when they should have been felt. The sadness he feels for his younger self and the way he had ached. But also the love for Dan, the pride, the comfort he feels in this very moment.

It’s not that they’re at the end, at all. He knows that, Dan knows that. They’ve still got things to work on, as individuals and as a couple both.

But this reminder of how far they have come already is a needed one.

“Do you want me to show you the videos one day,” Phil asks a bit later, and they agree on doing that together at some point.

“But not now,” Phil says, “I have had enough of emotions today. I need to be an emotionless blob for at least twelve hours.”

“Stealing my branding, how rude.” Dan quips. “But if you don’t have any emotions left can we maybe play Mario Kart so that I can win without you getting angry at me.”

They do end up playing Mario Kart, and Dan does win, but Phil realizes that game-induced rage is not on the list of emotions he has exhausted, so Dan has to just suck it up and deal with it.

“I hate you,” Phil yells as he’s won _again_ and laughs, open and fond.

Dan tries to tickle him, which never works because Phil is not ticklish, and tackles him to the ground instead.

“I hate you too, you spoon,” he smiles, so warmly, “I hate you the most.”

The air between them dances with love.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as part of a series in which I translate my own experiences as a partner of someone with mental illnesses to the world of Dan and Phil. I do adapt it quite a lot to their lives, but that being said, just because Dan has dealt with depression too, doesn't mean he acted like I described him to do here, and that Phil felt what I described him to feel. My characters are heavily influenced by my own experiences and are not necessarily what I think is true for them in real life! (But I do try to stay in character for them, that's what makes it fun after all :-) )
> 
> Those stories always make me feel a bit nervous though, which means that if you let me know your thoughts on it my heart will literally jump at the notification and I will smile so widely, you can barely imagine it!  
> Also, have a good day. <3
> 
> come talk to me on we-are-inimitable.tumblr.com!
> 
>  **tw: reference to self-harm**  
>  The line right before it starts says _But today has been bad again. I saw your bandage on your arm (...)_  
>  there's two paragraphs in between, where Phil explains that he feels helpless in situations like this. You can read safely again starting from the paragraph that says _"But you are", current Phil whispers._


End file.
